


I have loved you for a thousand years

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:06:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen spends Robbie Burns Day in Scotland, but Valentines Day with Matt in L.A. Originally written for the Smillan Valentines Day Fic Exchange on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have loved you for a thousand years

Something felt seriously wrong about spending Robbie Burns Day in Los Angeles. Everyone she’d dare mention haggis to looked at her as if she was an alien, there was not a ceilidh in sight, and the whiskey sucked.

Which was probably how she up on a plane back to London Heathrow on the twenty-third of January, cursing the LAX-LHR flight and just wishing she would land sometime soon She made her way up to Inverness, helped her mother with the haggis, neeps, and tatties, danced up a storm at a ceilidh and before she could think about it, it was back down to London and back to Los Angeles.

As she watched the London skyline disappear under a veil of clouds, it made her think about how much she missed being home, and how she missed her Who friends, and how her whole ‘going-to-America-and-being-a-big-star’ plan wasn’t doing wonders for her mental health or her career.

Oh well.

She couldn’t make the plane turn around now and not end up in jail or dead. Might as well live with it.

* * *

 

Three days later, Karen’s computer began to ring with the sounds of a Skype call from Matt.

Oh, that Matt.

Her former co-star whom she hadn’t made the least attempt to contact when she was recently in the UK.

“Hello, Mr. Smith,” she said, and then checked her watch. “It’s almost midnight in Cardiff! What are you doing up at such an ungodly hour?”

“Well, Arthur just sent me pap photos of you at the airport. You were in London and you didn’t even call me?” There’s a hint of something in his voice that she can’t decipher, and yet it makes her nervous.

“Well, I wasn’t technically in London,” Karen said, taking a sip of her tea. (British habits died hard, as she’d discovered. “I was in Heathrow because, on a whim, I decided to go home for Robbie Burns Day. So I was on my way up to Inverness.”

“Huh,” Matt said, and he got this unreadable expression on his face. “How was your time at home?”

“It was lovely,” Karen said, smiling wistfully. “Made me think about coming home.” “Can I come visit you?”

Karen was slightly taken aback. He’d never asked if he could come visit. They’d been mostly cut off from each other since she’d gone to Los Angeles. “Yeah, Matt, if you felt like it.”

“I will,” he said. “You mark my words, Karen Gillan, I will.”

* * *

She wasn’t expecting him to show up. But, Matt had always been hyperactive and a touch unpredictable, so she was only about sixty percent surprised when he called her from LAX.

“Kaz,” he said, “why aren’t you here to pick me up?”

“Probably because you didn’t tell me you were coming, stupid face. But I’ll come now.” She grabbed her keys and ran out the door before she could even think about what she was doing.

“Finally,” Matt said as she burst through the door at the airport. “Finally, she shows up.”

“L.A. traffic, Matt,” Karen said, trying to ignore the conspicuous lump in her throat and the way her heart rate sped up a little when he stepped forward and gave her a massive bear hug.

“Missed you, Kaz,” he whispered in her ear, and suddenly, yup, there they all were, all those crazy feelings that she hadn’t let herself express for all those years she’d co-starred with him.

“Missed you too, Matt,” she said, and now she regretted not calling him while she was in the UK.

* * *

True to form, he had no interest in actually sitting down for a proper meal, so they managed to navigate the interminable streets of Los Angeles for some takeaway Indian food that didn’t look like it would give them food poisoning. They sat on the floor in Karen’s flat (and Matt couldn’t believe how much of an improvement it was over any flat for a comparable price in London) and chowed down. Just like old times. Karen hadn’t felt much nostalgia or sadness for her former companions, but she realised, of course she hadn’t – she’d gone off and lost touch with all of them. Now, she was nostalgic and sad, because this was her every day for a while, and she didn’t realise how much she missed it. She didn’t notice that Matt had been staring at her as she looked contemplatively in to her rice.

“Kaz,” he said, “are you okay?” She sighed, and looked back up at him.

“Yeah, I’m alright. Just… missing the old days, you know?”

There was a beat of silence. Matt smiled wistfully, which was an ability Karen didn’t believe that people could develop before the age of thirty.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too. That’s why I’m here, I suppose.”

“So you came all this way to sit on my floor and eat curry with me, and I suppose you’re flying back tomorrow in time for a romantic dinner at Nobu with Daisy?” The twinge of bitterness that Karen heard in her voice was unintended, and she almost apologised to him right there.

He laughed, harsh and bitter, like she’d never heard him laugh before. “God, we’ve been out of touch, haven’t we Kaz? Daisy’s off the scene. Has been for a while.”

“I’m sorry, I had no idea…” and instinctively, she reached out for him and grabbed his hand. Matt sighed. “God, I miss you so much.”

“Me too, Matt.”

“You’ve done an awful good job of hiding it.”

“Oh come on,” Karen said, reeling. “We’ve both been busy, Matt. I’ve been doing movies. I’m an actress. It’s my job!”

“I just thought… I just thought we were…” Matt said, struggling to finish. Karen had never once in her life seen him at such a loss for words. If it weren’t for the emotional gravitas that she suspected the situation deserved, she would have whipped out her phone and taken a video.

“Friends?” Karen supplied, trying her best to be helpful.

“Friends?” Matt practically yelled back at her, his hands shaking. “Oh, sod it.” He got up and made his way towards the door.

“Matt,” she said, popping up and running after him, stopping him just short of her front entranceway, “what the hell?”

“Friends, huh Karen? Right, because I’m going to fly all the way across the goddamn Atlantic Ocean and continental United States for someone who I like as a friend. I don’t understand how you could possibly be so thick!” Quieter, he continued, “Did you really just want to be friends this whole time?”

“No,” Karen just managed, and finally, here, she was being perfectly honest, she was addressing the feelings that Matt gave her, and everything that she missed about home and him most of all. “No, Matt, I didn’t not want to be just friends, but I felt that our hands were a little tied. There was this whole unspoken rule about not dating your co-stars, and I had Patrick and you had Daisy and then… then I just wasn’t around any more, and you deserve more than a girlfriend half a world away. It’s like life just kept getting in the way, Matt. But the way I dreamed about you, the things I managed to think up… nothing before or since has ever compared, Matt. Nothing’s’ compared to you.”

Based on the look Matt was giving her, Karen couldn’t decide if she thought he was going to throttle her, kiss her, or storm out the door. He went for the second one, and the next thing she knew he was crushing himself against her, arms wrapped around her waist and lips against hers. She felt his tongue prodding her lips, and she opened her mouth to him and mentally fistpumped, and then shivered when he ran his tongue across hers and gently slipped his fingers under the hem of her t-shirt. The feeling of his fingers on her skin – and there was something electric about it that she’d always felt inklings of but had never really experienced – that made her mind spin with anticipation. He pulled away, looked at her kind of funny, and said,

“Is someone else dropping by tonight?”

What? “No, Matt, no, there’s not anyone coming, if that’s what you’re implying…”

“Good,” he said, “because I am taking you to bed and we are not leaving there for a while.”

“Oh,” Karen said, and hoped that she wasn’t making too much of a dopey happy face. She probably was though, because there was Matt, grinning like an idiot as she walked him back through her apartment. He stopped her somewhere in the middle of her living room not far away from their abandoned dinner (waste of good Indian food, she thought) and kissed her again, and something about how his hands were once again under her shirt and rubbing against her low back made her knees go conspicuously weak. Matt took advantage of that and subsequently picked her up and carried her bridal style to her bedroom. She tossed her head back and laughed and was still laughing when he gently placed her down on her bed.

“You literally cannot be serious about anything for more than five minutes,” she said as he climbed over her.

“You’re about to be proved very, very wrong,” Matt said, and Karen had a snarky response forming in her head that died on her lips as soon as Matt kissed her again, and then suddenly getting Matt’s shirt off was very high on her list of priorities. She gave up on the buttons and just ripped it, then mentally reminded herself to help him sew those buttons back on if they ever got out of bed. He didn’t seem to care, but there he was with his lips on her neck and suddenly her brain shorted out again and she moaned embarrassingly loud. She could feel him smiling against her skin, the bastard. She sat up briefly to aid Matt in getting her shirt off, and then her bra (he was never good with fiddly things) and then he laid her back down and relieved her of her jeans. Not to be outdone, she started undoing his pants and pulling down his trousers and boxers but he pushed her back on to her back, slipped off the edge of the bed, and positioned himself between her legs. He looked up at her and opened his mouth to ask a question. She somehow (because she had no idea on how her brain would actually been working) intuited what he was about to ask.

“God yes,” she half-spoke, half-moaned.

About a nanosecond later her head was thrown back as she felt pleasure course through her body as his tongue rolled against her clit. One, then two fingers entered her and she literally screamed as his fingers curled inside her. She dug her heel in to Matt’s back accidentally, and as soon as he reached up and replaced her hand on her nipple with his she involuntarily pushed harder in to his back with her heel. That’s probably going to leave a mark, she thought, but he didn’t seem to stop or mind, even when she threaded her hand in his hair. He started focussing intently on her clit, and next thing she knew she was arching off the bed and coming around his fingers. He pulled off his briefs and climbed up over her on the bed.

“Kaz,” he breathed, and his voice was broken and his eyes were darker than anything she’d ever seen and she just wanted to kiss him absolutely senseless, “do you have anything?”

Oh, that. How unfair that he should ask her where anything (especially something so infrequently used) was in her post-orgasmic haze. “Ummm,” she said, helpfully, and flailed in the general direction of her nightstand.

“One second,” Matt said, and quickly dashed out of the bedroom, which at once was one of the most hilarious and sexy things that she’d possibly ever seen. She really hoped he didn’t trip over anything because she was not doing first aid on his naked… anything. She heard his suitcase unzip and zip and he came back with a fistful of condoms, swaggering triumphantly.

“You bastard,” she said, as he deposited all but one on the nightstand, “you totally planned this whole thing.”

“The possibility crossed my mind,” Matt replied. “Allow me,” Karen said, with a wicked smile, and pushed him back so he was lying on the bed. She ripped the foil open with her teeth, tossed it aside, and rolled the condom on, never taking her eyes off of him. There was something extremely gratifying about the way that his head lolled back and his mouth fell open. Deciding that she relished the sensation of being in control, she straddled him and sunk on to him as slow as she could possibly manage.

“God, Kaz, Karen,” he sputtered out, “just do it already.” His hands moved to her hips and tightened.

“Don’t know why you think this is any easier for me, Matthew,” Karen sputtered out, but put on a veil of crazy confident feminine guile and started rolling her hips very slowly. She bit her lip hard, and looked down at Matt whose pupils were blown out and just looked absolutely wrecked. He started rubbing clit gently, and then harder, and then right when she was about to come, thanks Matt, he rolled them over and started thrusting in to her like there was no tomorrow. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure how long she was going to last, but she bent both of her legs back and wrapped them around his waist, then suddenly he was just hitting the spot, and then she was arching off the bed and seeing stars, and she was just barely aware of his hips stuttering and then giving one final prodigious thrust and collapsing on top of her. They just lay there like that for an indeterminate amount of time (Karen wasn’t going to be counting anything, she knew that much) until he rolled off of her and pulled out and dealt with the condom and such.

She was still lying on her back when he got back to bed so he curled up beside her, and fell asleep in about thirty seconds flat.

For the first time in a long time, Karen felt whole.

* * *

 

His return ticket had been booked for the fifteenth, but he managed to worm his way out of further Doctor Who promotional events so that he could stay a week. He disappeared for an hour that Valentines Day, but re-appeared with roses so she forgave him the minor heart attack.

The next day, she gave her landlord notice, and later that month, followed Matt back to London. He was there, waiting at the airport, and he took her to his flat without any questions. There was an extra chest of drawers, and some of the closet space had been cleared out.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m looking forward to this.”

“Me too,” he said, and kissed her.

Later that night, when they were curled up against each other, Karen had a realisation and almost laughed out loud.

“Our anniversary is Valentine’s Day,” she said.

“So?”

“It’s a bit rom-com cliché,” she said, “don’t you think?”

“Karen Sheila Gillan,” Matt said, “I would be happy to live a rom-com cliché with you. Alternatively, I believe an argument could be made for the thirteenth or the fifteenth if you felt it necessary.”

“How did you know my middle name?”

“Looked it up on Wikipedia.” They both laughed.

“I don’t know yours yet,” Karen said. “I’m sorry.”

“Fair,” Matt said.

“We can keep our anniversary on the fourteenth,” Karen said, “but please promise me that we won’t have a baby born on Christmas.”

“I’ll do my best,” Matt said, and pulled her close to him again.


End file.
